Wednesday, March 25, 2015

How to make
friends. Does anybody know? You hang out in the vicinity of others and trust to
luck. You kick a pebble. The wind harries you thereafter; you suffer a windborne
harry. Lesser hoodlums than you have achieved swifter triumphs in the quest for
common fellowship. Vim, you have, and vigor; vim, you have, and vinegar. Someone
invents beer. This helps. You walk toward a table where new acquaintances await your contribution
to the daily topics—(1) Does everything suck or have we overlooked a key detail?
(2) Just who the hell do people think they are? and (3) [censored]—that people bat-about in the ruckus of taverns. Only, you’re not in charge. The earth, in
its subtle tectonic shifts, is in charge. The slope of the ill-paved concrete
floor, is in charge. The rickety nature of the table, lacking some sort of
basic buttress, is in charge. Internally, you blame these forces the moment
your glass topples, heaving an impressive pond of house amber onto the seated
figure of the fellow you know the least, Rod Smith. He’s cool; he lets it
slide. The two of you get to be friends. The circle widens. He keeps talking about
“Sonny” and “Bird”. (You say Sonny who? Sonny Criss, Sonny Stitt, Sonny
Sharrock? because this aggravates him—there is Sonny and no greater Sonny!) He
puts books into your hands and the hands of others. In time, he puts your books
into the hands of others. He reads his nutty poems. He invites others to read
their nutty poems. In time, you come to wildly believe in this nuttiness. You
throw a pitcher of “American adjunct lager” onto a fellow sporting a suburban
haircut in a billiards tavern, as Johnny Cash sings “Folsom Prison Blues”
though a jukebox. The fellow topples off his barstool. You will not be friends
with him! One night, Rod Smith drives you home, up hills, through a tough layer
of ice and snow, while you’re shivering with the early stages of the flu. This
is a car ride for which you will always be grateful. In time, you imitate Mike
Tyson. (“Thnookid!”, you say.) In time, you imitate Theofanis Gekas (“MREAGH!”
you say, after the missed penalty versus Costa Rica.) You now converse like “Up
the Swans!” and “Roy Brown is the greatest jump musician” and “I think it’s
gonna be Rory’s year on the links” and “I’d sure like to see Doug Lang and Tom
Raworth give a reading.” You’re up on the roof of your building drinking a
Heather Fuller Brewing Co. Ale out of mason jars with Rod Smith, A Righteous
Fellow, but today let’s just say he’s one of the greatest poets the world will
ever have the privilege to read, to hear, to appreciate. Do you know about this?
He has a new book, TOUCHÉ, that you could order, dig, etc., fuff. Do you know
about this? “Doot dew” goes the world. “Doot dew.”

If you require assistance disabling Views, et cetera,
counselors may be trucked-in on a sliding-scale fee system to help you with (A)
Emotional Considerations (B) Disabling Views (C) Enabling Zippy Views.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

A sawhorse in the past or a sea horse in the present. It’s
rehearsal if you practice a play in advance, not another trip in a hearse,
unless of course the play struggles. Hirsute, on the other hand, doesn’t refer
to her outfit, it’s not her suit, or her strong suit, but she sure might wear
the hair-shirt. All the boxers I don’t know—all the other breeds I don’t know—I
can’t be debriefed on boxers. I can’t write a pugilist—I can’t write a to-do
list—I can’t write an evangelist. Even Jell-O could sate an evangelical, or
maybe the effect would be intangible: is there a tangelo, aye, in the punch? I
can, you can, he she it cans, we canned, you canned, they canned heat, answers,
tomatoes. Ghengis Khan Job, Ghengis Cannes Job, Ghengis Cannes Edison, Ghengis
Khan Carne. The biblical hard luck case Jōb, okay? Okay. Biblical Jōb Description,
Biblical Jōblessness,
Biblical Hand Jōb, Biblical Book of Blow Jōb, the Biblical Book of Jōb
Search. A hearse is a hearse of course of course unless it’s Mr. Dead.

Friday, March 6, 2015

Nearly two years ago, I met some friends at the pub to watch
little SwanseaCity
host big-money Manchester
United in the opening match of the 2013-14 season. The Swans, still fairly new
to the rugged Premier League, dropped the fixture, 1-4, and right afterwards, I
took the subway out to see my parents; I’d been dressed in my beloved Michu centenary
home kit. My mother picked me up at Glenmont station. “That’s a nice shirt”,
she remarked. “It’s not a shirt, mom. It’s a kit”, I said. “You put it
together?” she wondered. I shook my head. “No. It came from Thailand.” To
be fair, a “kit” includes the entire footballing getup, but I’m hardly going to
the pub clad in shorts, shin guards, and boots. I love my mom. She turned right
onto Connecticut Avenue.
“So they put it together in Thailand”,
she said.

To make my life easier, I do not own the following kits
(both home and away, unless otherwise noted): Rutger Hauer Appreciation Day
kit, Breakdance kit, Contract with America kit, Ethnic Festival home kit, Mongoose
kit, Great Horned Owl kit, Reversible kit, Alias kit, Wrinkle Free home kit,
Hockey Bro kit, Fugitive kit, Bubonic Plague Historical Reenactment away kit, Joke
Store Beard away kit, Hookah kit, Marriage kit, Formal kit, Religious Worship
home kit, All U Can Eat Buffet & Apres Ski kit, Amphibious kit, and High
Fructose Corn Syrup kit. Thank goodness. Because how could you find anything at
all if you had to sort through all those kits?

Some days ago, I found myself rummaging through all the
kits I do own—specifically, my Jogging kit, Hiking kit, Second Interview away
kit, Corporate Nostalgia away kit, Supervisor away kit, American kit, Airport
away kit, Tourist away kit, Hoodlum away kit, Short-sleeved Under kit, Third
Date home kit (which could always lead to wearing the Birthday home kit), Pub
away kit, Pajama home kit, and Housework home kit. There it was, finally: I’d located
my No. 8 Jonjo Shelvey away kit, in its Adidas Climacool black and red
splendor, a single Premier League lion loitering in the lowest dip of the 8. First,
I donned a fine long-sleeved Under kit, then the Shelvey kit, then I made for
my neighborhood pub.

Shelvey.

My friend, Alex Mejia, greeted me at the pub, where he works
as a bartender. He likes SwanseaCity, too, and at the
beginning of the current season, I gave him my beloved Michu centenary home
kit. Alex indicated that several Manchester United fans were sitting at the
bar. Everyone could see the Swansea
crest: an away swan. I should note that the same two clubs—Swansea and Man
U—met to open the 2014-15 season (back in August) but that time, Swansea won,
in Manchester, 1-2. Heavy snow fell outside the pub. I’d stomped through the
snow, to celebrate, because Swansea
had defeated Man U yet again, earlier in the day, twice in the same season, a
first in the team’s history. Shelvey had been Man of the Match. I showed the
Man U supporters “Shelvey” on my kit. O, how they howled.

My name is Dan Gutstein. I wear the Jonjo Shelvey away kit since
I wish to honor the tempestuous genius, No. 8, who plays midfield for SwanseaCity, the greatest little football club
in the world. Up the Swans!

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Good morning! Could you do me a favor? Let’s everybody place
his sporty sunglasses on the back of his neck, as if the back of the neck had pupils
(that required shade.) Thank you. I can observe quite brightly that everyone
wore the company-issue salmon polo. Later on, it’ll be Middle Management!, on
the loose!, at the coffee urn! (The selfies will be classic.) (I hope you
charged your phones.) Sometimes we feel like deer, don’t we?, clipping out of
the woods to gaze at the lumbering train as it staggers toward the destination.
Deer and train; this is a useful dichotomy. The train—kind of like American
commerce. It’s a deer-watch-train economy. (Granted, with some local variation.)
We could call each customer “the little ceiling” or we could envision the whole
sha-bang as “subsistence level consumerism.” The sheer amount of going concerns
that orbit “the little ceiling of a subsistence-level consumer” and you, Middle
Management!, will you, too, orbit? Don’t answer. Thank you. It gets so you
can’t have a thought about the arts without yearning for a sandwich. The Dutch
master, Peter Paul Rubens, for example: the extravagant mythology or (to be
honest) a few hot corned beefs on rye, a few Reubens. You didn’t hear this from
me, but that continental breakfast looked dangerous; “incontinental breakfast” sounds
more like it. Anyone here an Arsenal supporter? (Don’t answer that question.) Anyone
here a Walloon? (Don’t answer.) These are rhetorical questions. Where was I?
Oh, yes. The Triumph of the Arts. Well, not recently! Do you dig-dug? Rock
songs: GAH!: Rock songs. The arena rock wafting (GAH!) as you entered this
training facility? I think of it as an
old black turd with white edges, kind of like a charcoal briquette, rotting in
the weeds. I threw that Journey song—“Don’t Stop Believing”—into Google
Translate and it returned a photograph of a whitening dark turd in Paris, 4tharrondissement, near the Louvre. Anyone
here have high cholesterol? This time you may respond (a show of hands.) Thank
you, and you, and you, too. Yes, this information, senior management did ask me
to report. High cholesterol, naughty naughty. (Ehhhhh. Siiiiike.) I’m not
really the speaker. I’m not really from this company. And by the looks of things,
I’m about to get chased in . . . three, two, one!

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Like most writers who wish to publish new writing, I spend
considerable energy submitting unsolicited poems and stories through online
submission managers, and to a lesser extent, the snail mail. In the old days,
of course, writers would send all
their submissions through the post office: a buck or two for the big envelope plus
a single stamp for the SASE. Lately, a number of highly-visible literary
journals have begun to require reading fees, typically $3.00 a pop, for online
(slush pile) submissions. The journals defend this practice by reminding us
writers that we’d spend just as much on postage; many indicate that the reading
fees help them to defray the administrative costs of producing the periodical. I
don’t wish to dispute either of these explanations, but at the same time,
journals cannot demonstrate that they’ve actually considered the submission.
They cannot demonstrate that they’ve provided a service (evaluating the
submission) for the fee ($3.00) they require to accompany the writer’s creative
work. At least by paying postage in the old days, I knew that the U.S. Postal
Service had delivered the submission, and later, delivered the response; the post office had provided a service. If the journal didn’t choose to appraise my
writing, that didn’t matter, because the journal didn’t profit from my correspondence.
Similarly, if I upload an electronic submission for free, the magazine can choose
to reject it outright, since it doesn’t profit from my interest in becoming a
contributor. Unfortunately, these fee-for-submission literary magazines may have
entered fraudulent terrain. Who’s to say they don’t delete poems and stories,
while pocketing the money? If they receive several thousand submissions, then
they may profit considerably without exerting much more effort than clicking a
mouse. I would imagine that many thoughtful writers (as well as those who lack
the means to submit) are offended by this practice and aren’t participating in
the fee-for-reading environment. This would potentially shrink the population
of viable writers contacting a given magazine, and to me, reinforce the sense
that fee-for-reading journals solicit most of their published material on the dollars
of those willing to pay the toll. In order to squash this perception, a journal
should offer personal feedback to any author who’s submitted $3.00 along
with a sample of writing. There must be incontrovertible proof that editors
have dedicated time and consideration. Otherwise, more and more journals slither
into gunk, junk, murk, mud, slime, grime, oil-spill, habitat-wreck,
flight-of-species, blight-of-planet.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

I am ready to report that my most recent durable dietary
change—eating organic mushrooms—has made “a difference” in my life. I don’t
even know what to call them, white mushrooms, basic mushrooms, simple mushrooms,
bland mushrooms, little mushrooms?, but I purchase said fungus in a
plastic-wrap container at the organic food store, squeezing one of the
assemblage through the plastic in the sake of outcomes assessment. If nice and
plump, a good outcome, then I place container in basket. They’re always nice
and plump. Mostly, I just cut a few mushrooms (raw) into The Daily Salad. Why
didn’t I eat a mushroom earlier in life? Perhaps I fretted over its silly
appearance, or I worried that it would taste like paste, or maybe I figured
that friends would poke me with accusations. Now hear this, smart aleck: I’m
not talking about a “shroom”, the mystical, elusive medication that ostensibly
matures beneath a cow-pattie, whole bags of which have failed to enlighten a
single thrill-seeker. No, I’m not talking about a “shroom”, but a plain legume
that has bestowed upon me what I will call “a difference.” First, before I
describe “a difference”, I must insert some science. Namely, I have made no
other durable changes in dietary endeavors of late, my intake otherwise
continuing to involve the basic food groups: fine stouts and ales, The Daily
Salad, coffee, snacks, and protein. Thus, the addition of a mushroom must be
the cause of “a difference.” O, rubbery toadstool! O, noteworthy contribution!
O, neutral texture! But I digress. I am, in a word, better. This is “a
difference”. Sure, it could be a phase, this betterment, it could be an error
in accountancy, it could be an intoxication borne of a sudden enthusiasm, but it’s
not. I am—in a word—better. Sitting
there, during Rockford Files reruns a few weeks ago, I had to ask myself: What
accounts for this smoother existence, if not the mushroom? In a world where
television and doctors insist that you must have a moderate-to-severe
pre-illness, and you probably don’t (believe me) you probably don’t suffer from
a moderate-to-severe pre-illness, I am here to say, as a fellow who felt fine
to begin with, why not institute a trial mushroom regimen? The organic
mushroom, my friends, contains a respectable loveliness inside every little
cap, O yes.

Monday, March 2, 2015

The crow can count, we’ve heard of birds gifted with
mathematics, the crow can count. “One, two, three owls”, it counts, except in corvine
monosyllabic, not English. It lets the entire village know, “One, two, three
owls”, its shrieks-and-cacks worse than those of any doomsayer, any ruddy
stumblebum, any witch stirring any cauldron in the vicinity of any petrified shrubbery.
I hear, you hear, we hear; the one, two, three owls hear the crow’s actuarial deductions.
The mother owl spreads her wings so wide, she resembles a blanket of owl, a
shocking feathery shroud that will, one day, envelop an entire tree full of
crows in a Middle Ages swoop so feral and exacting, the crow community will,
one day, lament the owl-action in mournful ethnic dirges as somber as the
southern sun embalming the tintypes of vellum clouds. (We speak of American
crows, great horned owls.) For now, though, the owl must impress the growing
ruckus of crows with its tomfoolery attack, beak clacking with the violence of
its imagination. The other owls aren’t owls yet, but owlets, white fluffy youngsters
who clash heads owing to uncertain footing in their country of air, their
sturdy aerie, their dizzying altitude. The crows cackle in the upward-climbing
false lightning of a bare tulip poplar, then blow toward the elliptical
promises of a compass point, the steam or smoke punched from a solitary
chimney. How noise recedes, how the crows assimilate, how the owls stamp down
their outrage. In their ensuing vigilance, the owls may enter the luxury of
ideas. They think “I am commodity”; they think “What is commodity?” They have
simple demands. A wading bird they would like to eat, a rodent they would like
to eat, and they do demand, and they will eat, for there is a fourth owl, a
father who hunts in the shadow-play of receding fears and quiet plumage. In a
few weeks, the one, two, three owls will disembark from the nest, three
wrenches of big-talon fabric winging toward a set of (a population of)
improvisations. I will see this; you will see; we will see; and as for the
crow, the crow can count. No more owls in the aerie, it will note. The danger
no longer constrained to a domicile, but three drops of dye (four, to be exact)
that strictly color the minutes and seconds of the impulse to covet any
direction, whatsoever.

APPEARANCES WITH HETERODYNE IMPROVISATIONAL MUSIC PROJECT

I have appeared several times (as “Words”) with the Heterodyne improvisational music project, which is led by Maria Shesiuk and Ted Zook. Other performers have included Sarah Hughes, Leah Gage, Doug Kallmeyer, Bob Boilen, Sam Lohman, Amanda Huron, and Patrick Whitehead. Here are three free sample recordings, each about 30 minutes long, available on Soundcloud: